Friday 4 October 2013 06.46 EDT
First published on Friday 4 October 2013 06.46 EDT

It's easy to get steamed up over headlines in the right-wing press, but sometimes it's what they're telling you that's irritating you – not the newspapers' attitude. One that recently raised my blood temperature was: "Women forced back to work". This was about some sort of government arrangement of entitlements or benefits not designed to favour stay-at-home mums.

It's not just the assumption that what women do at home coping with kids, cooking and cleanliness isn't work – though I can hardly blame (in this case) the Telegraph for that – but the fact that what gets forgotten is that women have always worked. We have worked in everything: in farming, crops, animal care, packaging, the lot – and often had the benefit of doing it with other women, not just alone at home. It's all work wherever it's done.

Another irritating headline was: "Some doctors paid more than the prime minister." So what? Neither of them is supposed to be rated by what they earn. Surely only bankers and those in finance rate themselves mainly by how much they earn. The professions – which includes, however dubiously, politicians – have never been supposed to go hungry, of course, but they were rated on skill, honesty, dedication, seniority. Of course it's good for politicians, lawyers, medics to have a knowledge of how money should work for the nation, for health services or the law, but are we supposed to think they are to be valued by their price?